7 ms·

Why Math Might Be the Secret to School Success

100 points by JSeymourATL 12y ago

Kevin_S 12y ago
As someone who hated math in k-12 and excelled in reading, this is interesting to me. I have gotten more into math as a soon to be college graduate, (Econ/Acct) where I have learned I am not bad at math, and the math I have done for my degree, econometrics, calculus, were all interesting (though not on a high level). I think if I had been taught math as a child better than what I was, I would have moved more toward a CS/CE/data engineering degree instead of business. The math scared me off. For my kids I look forward to trying to supplement their K-12 education (math especially) with other forms of education that I hope foster an interest in math. K-12 never really gave me a chance to find math interesting. Does anyone have any great tools/resources to help supplement public math education?
- emilianodelgado 12y ago
  There is aleks.com, khanacademy.org, and a few others.
- GregBuchholz 12y ago
  Well I just finished reading a book: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas ...which I found my self saying "yes" to out loud while reading it. It's premise is that people can learn better when there is an aspect they can interact with, and computers can provide simulated environments in which to explore concepts. Some of the examples given are younger kids exploring ideas in differential geometry through the use of turtle graphics. It is hard to get across in a small snippet of text, but I kept thinking that was how I wanted to be taught back in school. You compare how kids are self motivated to learn complex tasks like walking, talking, etc. but lose a lot of motivation when required to memorize dull facts about the interior angles of triangle. There's not a lot of concrete actionable items here, other than getting that book, and maybe downloading a Logo interpreter to play with. I've just started to work with teaching my own kids programming, so I don't have a lot of advice at this point, but I hope the book is as inspirational to you, as it was to me. https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=mindstorms:+children+computers+powerful+ideas https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=mindstorms:+children+co...
  - hcarvalhoalves 12y ago
    > You compare how kids are self motivated to learn complex tasks like walking, talking, etc. but lose a lot of motivation when required to memorize dull facts about the interior angles of triangle. Funny you mention this. I remember being taught the sum of the internal angles, the pythagorean theorem and other facts by folding paper triangles.
  - germinalphrase 12y ago
    Seymour Papert is a big name in Constructivist learning circles and "Mindstorms" is, indeed, a great text. Constructivist learning can work wonderfully for motivated learners, but it can run into problems with low-motivation/maturity and/or a results-oriented school system (which we have in the US). In the US, students are expected to know/be able to perform a variety of standards-based tasks when they finish each grade. Constructivist learning is typically too exploratory and inefficient for these standards to be reliably fulfilled for every student within a definite period of time (and, as we know, teachers are expected to get every child over the line regardless of interest/ability/stability). Whether or not the learning is authentic, meaningful, long-lasting is besides the point - teachers are incentivized by standards-based testing to focus specifically and efficiently on those limited topics/skills. Accordingly, you are more likely to see this style of learning in the earlier grades (simply because the expectations/rigor are different for primary vs secondary ed. with the former having a stronger focus on social-emotional learning than the latter) - but most often it springs out of informal learning environments (like home, after school clubs, camps, etc.). Constructivism is great if you're trying to foster creativity, self-management, and teamwork.
- maroonblazer 12y ago
  I'm interested too. My 8 year old son hates math. I've tried introducing him to some of the apps like Scratch and its ilk, but he's not interested. The closest I've successfully come is using the blocks in Minecraft to illustrate why/how multiplication is not simply repeated addition.
  - GregBuchholz 12y ago
    Speaking of Minecraft, you might want to check out something like: http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2014/05/minecraft-graphics-turtle.html http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2014/05/minecraft-graphics-tur... ...my goal is to eventually get something like that working with FMS Logo.
  - seanflyon 12y ago
    Take a look at DragonBox (http://www.dragonboxapp.com/ http://www.dragonboxapp.com/). It does a great job of presenting algebra as more than just arithmetic and wrote memorization.
- papad 12y ago
  DragonBox is one of my favorites to teach basic algebra to my eight year old nephew: http://www.dragonboxapp.com/ http://www.dragonboxapp.com/. It came out of a research project at U of Washington. I also love doing Maker projects because I believe the best way to teach math is to build real-world, functional things that show the end purpose of math. For example, I have done this workshop with my nephew too which really engaged his interest in math and STEM more broadly: http://www.einsteinsworkshop.com/now-enrolling http://www.einsteinsworkshop.com/now-enrolling.
  - murphysbooks 12y ago
    My 5 and 7 year old LOVE DragonBox. (I would be bragging more, but they get into pretty big fights over whose turn it is.) The way it eased them into algebra is so simple that it is genius. All math should be that approachable. Here is a fun game then... BTW you happen to be doing math.
brettkc 12y ago
Is this actually a secret? Having recently gone through the 'math gauntlet' that is a formal CS education, it is astounding the number of people frightened to death of mathematics.
eastbayjake 12y ago
I was shocked listening this morning that only 58 seconds of every 5 hour preschool day are spent on math. In my experience, elementary school teachers tend to be soft-skills people who primarily just love working with young children. Many didn't enjoy math, felt they were bad at it, and would prefer to teach children reading and writing. And because elementary schools have one teacher guide the same group of children through all four core subjects instead of specializing in one subject (like middle or high school teachers) the teacher's less-preferenced subjects get less time. Source: former (public) high school science teacher
- clarkmoody 12y ago
  I am interested to hear if high-school/college style teaching has been tried at the elementary level. And what were the outcomes? Specifically, have schools tried to partition students into courses based on achievement level, regardless of age? There would be the Math 1 course that might have 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders in it, and Math 2 might have brighter 1st graders, etc.
  - jkimmel 12y ago
    I haven't heard of this being attempted, though I would surprised to find that it hasn't. However, one reason it might be avoided is due to the potential negative effects tracking [1] strategies may have on some students. In my public school district, any form of tracking at the elementary level was difficult to implement due to pushback from parents, even in situations where the educators felt it was beneficial. 1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_%28education%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_%28education%29
  - eximius 12y ago
    I imagine that anywhere it is suggested it would be shot down by logistical concerns as well as sociological concerns of mixing age groups. You need a relatively common level of maturity, etc.
  - 21echoes 12y ago
    Coming from Delaware, most every school, public and private, that I know of partitions students into math courses based on achievement level. They typically don't let students go "out of grade" by more than a year, but that's a sizable amount in high school (e.g., some juniors learning the same material as some freshman). I didn't know there were places that didn't do it that way-- do your local schools not have advanced math & regular math tracks for their students?
numeromancer 12y ago
Gayle Conigliaro's preschool students are jumping as they count, to get the feeling of the numbers into their bodies — a concept called "embodied cognition." My 4 year-old learned all about circles by spinning round and round. Math makes her just giddy with excitement! She can't calculate circumference yet, but that doesn't matter, because I feel confident that she has embodied the cognition. I'm taking her to the playground tomorrow so she can do line integrals on the monkey bars. Can we bring back the scowling school-marms now?
- sp332 12y ago
  There are many, many ways to count and to comprehend magnitude. Jumping is a valid one.
peter303 12y ago
My father played math games with me when I was little. Made it exciting, not fearful. Grade school math was kind of slow and boring. Didnt get more interesting until algebra.
japhyr 12y ago
I've spent much of the last twenty years teaching math to middle and high school students who had previously been burned out on math. I teach in an environment where I get to let students progress at their own pace. Everyone gets a clear set of math milestones laid out, and they earn their credit when they reach those milestones. Students see me mostly as someone who helps them reach objective milestones, not as someone who tells them they can't do math again. One of the most significant issues I see is there's often no way back into math if a student gets off track early on. My students typically got confused in 2nd-5th grade, and then math never made sense again. When given the space to work independently, with support, at their own pace, they get to clear up old confusions and realize how much they're capable of when they're not under pressure to keep up with everyone else. One of the things I enjoy most is taking students who haven't understood math since 3rd grade, and bringing them to a place where they can start to use algebra to solve problems they care about. From then on, they are set up to make good use of math the rest of their lives. I have a 3 1/2 year old son now, and it's fascinating to watch his development after having been a teacher for so long. He's in that wonderful stage now where "22" is just as big as "a million", and when he wants to describe a large number of things he just strings random numbers together: "Dad, there's 23 45 8 17 100 stars in the sky tonight!" Just the other night he asked, "What do you get when you add 3 and 3?" It's fascinating to watch that understanding develop, and to just keep answering his questions honestly, with the mindset of giving him a strong foundation for more advanced concepts later on.
- ksk 12y ago
  Do you have any tips as to how to get kids to sit down and work on math stuff again?
  - Someone 12y ago
    Why require the "sit down" part? As the article states, you can do math without sitting down, too. Let them estimate how many steps a walk from A to B takes, or what distance is larger and check it by walking, ask them to count how many tiles cover a square (multiplication as a fast way of counting every tile), to estimate the number of beans in a jar and from it the weight of a single bean (combine that with Archimedes' law and let them predict whether it floats), the height of buildings (3 to 3.5 meters per floor, but also a trigonometry exercise when combined with measuring the length of its shade) etc.
clueless123 12y ago
As much as I remember, Montesory schools teach math concepts every day all through out the day.
secabeen 12y ago
If you are looking for an example of this, check out the PBS show Peg + Cat.

100 points by JSeymourATL 12y ago

As someone who hated math in k-12 and excelled in reading, this is interesting to me. I have gotten more into math as a soon to be college graduate, (Econ/Acct) where I have learned I am not bad at math, and the math I have done for my degree, econometrics, calculus, were all interesting (though not on a high level). I think if I had been taught math as a child better than what I was, I would have moved more toward a CS/CE/data engineering degree instead of business. The math scared me off. For my kids I look forward to trying to supplement their K-12 education (math especially) with other forms of education that I hope foster an interest in math. K-12 never really gave me a chance to find math interesting. Does anyone have any great tools/resources to help supplement public math education?

emilianodelgado 12y ago
There is aleks.com, khanacademy.org, and a few others.
GregBuchholz 12y ago
Well I just finished reading a book: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas ...which I found my self saying "yes" to out loud while reading it. It's premise is that people can learn better when there is an aspect they can interact with, and computers can provide simulated environments in which to explore concepts. Some of the examples given are younger kids exploring ideas in differential geometry through the use of turtle graphics. It is hard to get across in a small snippet of text, but I kept thinking that was how I wanted to be taught back in school. You compare how kids are self motivated to learn complex tasks like walking, talking, etc. but lose a lot of motivation when required to memorize dull facts about the interior angles of triangle. There's not a lot of concrete actionable items here, other than getting that book, and maybe downloading a Logo interpreter to play with. I've just started to work with teaching my own kids programming, so I don't have a lot of advice at this point, but I hope the book is as inspirational to you, as it was to me. https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=mindstorms:+children+computers+powerful+ideas https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=mindstorms:+children+co...
- hcarvalhoalves 12y ago
  > You compare how kids are self motivated to learn complex tasks like walking, talking, etc. but lose a lot of motivation when required to memorize dull facts about the interior angles of triangle. Funny you mention this. I remember being taught the sum of the internal angles, the pythagorean theorem and other facts by folding paper triangles.
- germinalphrase 12y ago
  Seymour Papert is a big name in Constructivist learning circles and "Mindstorms" is, indeed, a great text. Constructivist learning can work wonderfully for motivated learners, but it can run into problems with low-motivation/maturity and/or a results-oriented school system (which we have in the US). In the US, students are expected to know/be able to perform a variety of standards-based tasks when they finish each grade. Constructivist learning is typically too exploratory and inefficient for these standards to be reliably fulfilled for every student within a definite period of time (and, as we know, teachers are expected to get every child over the line regardless of interest/ability/stability). Whether or not the learning is authentic, meaningful, long-lasting is besides the point - teachers are incentivized by standards-based testing to focus specifically and efficiently on those limited topics/skills. Accordingly, you are more likely to see this style of learning in the earlier grades (simply because the expectations/rigor are different for primary vs secondary ed. with the former having a stronger focus on social-emotional learning than the latter) - but most often it springs out of informal learning environments (like home, after school clubs, camps, etc.). Constructivism is great if you're trying to foster creativity, self-management, and teamwork.
maroonblazer 12y ago
I'm interested too. My 8 year old son hates math. I've tried introducing him to some of the apps like Scratch and its ilk, but he's not interested. The closest I've successfully come is using the blocks in Minecraft to illustrate why/how multiplication is not simply repeated addition.
- GregBuchholz 12y ago
  Speaking of Minecraft, you might want to check out something like: http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2014/05/minecraft-graphics-turtle.html http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2014/05/minecraft-graphics-tur... ...my goal is to eventually get something like that working with FMS Logo.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  Take a look at DragonBox (http://www.dragonboxapp.com/ http://www.dragonboxapp.com/). It does a great job of presenting algebra as more than just arithmetic and wrote memorization.
papad 12y ago
DragonBox is one of my favorites to teach basic algebra to my eight year old nephew: http://www.dragonboxapp.com/ http://www.dragonboxapp.com/. It came out of a research project at U of Washington. I also love doing Maker projects because I believe the best way to teach math is to build real-world, functional things that show the end purpose of math. For example, I have done this workshop with my nephew too which really engaged his interest in math and STEM more broadly: http://www.einsteinsworkshop.com/now-enrolling http://www.einsteinsworkshop.com/now-enrolling.
- murphysbooks 12y ago
  My 5 and 7 year old LOVE DragonBox. (I would be bragging more, but they get into pretty big fights over whose turn it is.) The way it eased them into algebra is so simple that it is genius. All math should be that approachable. Here is a fun game then... BTW you happen to be doing math.

brettkc 12y ago

Is this actually a secret? Having recently gone through the 'math gauntlet' that is a formal CS education, it is astounding the number of people frightened to death of mathematics.

eastbayjake 12y ago

I was shocked listening this morning that only 58 seconds of every 5 hour preschool day are spent on math. In my experience, elementary school teachers tend to be soft-skills people who primarily just love working with young children. Many didn't enjoy math, felt they were bad at it, and would prefer to teach children reading and writing. And because elementary schools have one teacher guide the same group of children through all four core subjects instead of specializing in one subject (like middle or high school teachers) the teacher's less-preferenced subjects get less time. Source: former (public) high school science teacher

clarkmoody 12y ago
I am interested to hear if high-school/college style teaching has been tried at the elementary level. And what were the outcomes? Specifically, have schools tried to partition students into courses based on achievement level, regardless of age? There would be the Math 1 course that might have 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders in it, and Math 2 might have brighter 1st graders, etc.
- jkimmel 12y ago
  I haven't heard of this being attempted, though I would surprised to find that it hasn't. However, one reason it might be avoided is due to the potential negative effects tracking [1] strategies may have on some students. In my public school district, any form of tracking at the elementary level was difficult to implement due to pushback from parents, even in situations where the educators felt it was beneficial. 1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_%28education%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_%28education%29
- eximius 12y ago
  I imagine that anywhere it is suggested it would be shot down by logistical concerns as well as sociological concerns of mixing age groups. You need a relatively common level of maturity, etc.
- 21echoes 12y ago
  Coming from Delaware, most every school, public and private, that I know of partitions students into math courses based on achievement level. They typically don't let students go "out of grade" by more than a year, but that's a sizable amount in high school (e.g., some juniors learning the same material as some freshman). I didn't know there were places that didn't do it that way-- do your local schools not have advanced math & regular math tracks for their students?

numeromancer 12y ago

Gayle Conigliaro's preschool students are jumping as they count, to get the feeling of the numbers into their bodies — a concept called "embodied cognition." My 4 year-old learned all about circles by spinning round and round. Math makes her just giddy with excitement! She can't calculate circumference yet, but that doesn't matter, because I feel confident that she has embodied the cognition. I'm taking her to the playground tomorrow so she can do line integrals on the monkey bars. Can we bring back the scowling school-marms now?

sp332 12y ago
There are many, many ways to count and to comprehend magnitude. Jumping is a valid one.

peter303 12y ago

My father played math games with me when I was little. Made it exciting, not fearful. Grade school math was kind of slow and boring. Didnt get more interesting until algebra.

japhyr 12y ago

I've spent much of the last twenty years teaching math to middle and high school students who had previously been burned out on math. I teach in an environment where I get to let students progress at their own pace. Everyone gets a clear set of math milestones laid out, and they earn their credit when they reach those milestones. Students see me mostly as someone who helps them reach objective milestones, not as someone who tells them they can't do math again. One of the most significant issues I see is there's often no way back into math if a student gets off track early on. My students typically got confused in 2nd-5th grade, and then math never made sense again. When given the space to work independently, with support, at their own pace, they get to clear up old confusions and realize how much they're capable of when they're not under pressure to keep up with everyone else. One of the things I enjoy most is taking students who haven't understood math since 3rd grade, and bringing them to a place where they can start to use algebra to solve problems they care about. From then on, they are set up to make good use of math the rest of their lives. I have a 3 1/2 year old son now, and it's fascinating to watch his development after having been a teacher for so long. He's in that wonderful stage now where "22" is just as big as "a million", and when he wants to describe a large number of things he just strings random numbers together: "Dad, there's 23 45 8 17 100 stars in the sky tonight!" Just the other night he asked, "What do you get when you add 3 and 3?" It's fascinating to watch that understanding develop, and to just keep answering his questions honestly, with the mindset of giving him a strong foundation for more advanced concepts later on.

ksk 12y ago
Do you have any tips as to how to get kids to sit down and work on math stuff again?
- Someone 12y ago
  Why require the "sit down" part? As the article states, you can do math without sitting down, too. Let them estimate how many steps a walk from A to B takes, or what distance is larger and check it by walking, ask them to count how many tiles cover a square (multiplication as a fast way of counting every tile), to estimate the number of beans in a jar and from it the weight of a single bean (combine that with Archimedes' law and let them predict whether it floats), the height of buildings (3 to 3.5 meters per floor, but also a trigonometry exercise when combined with measuring the length of its shade) etc.

clueless123 12y ago

As much as I remember, Montesory schools teach math concepts every day all through out the day.

secabeen 12y ago

If you are looking for an example of this, check out the PBS show Peg + Cat.